Is Chrome capable of competing with Microsoft and Apple on a PC level?

Google loves launching products and services that directly compete with established competitors, particularly Microsoft and Apple—Google Docs (Microsoft Office), Google TV (Apple TV), Android mobile platform (iPhone), and Google Chrome (Internet Explorer). To name but a few.

Now, Google is aiming for PCs, a possible hit on both Microsoft and Apple. The latter two company's are the makers of Windows and the Mac OS, highly established and extremely dominating platforms that make up the vast majority of all computers in the modern world.

But if Android for smartphones is evidence of anything, it's that a trendy, open platform that people believe in will sell like hotcakes, and there isn't much to suggest Google's Chrome-based PC, if executed well, can't do the very same. Of course, it's not even done yet. Quoth The Globe and Mail: 

Google, the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine, is holding off launching the Chrome-based PCs until it can fix some software bugs and make sure that the computers are compatible with other devices such as digital cameras, Google product manager Sundar Pichai said Tuesday.

“Amazing progress, but we aren’t fully done yet,” Sundar told media in San Francisco recently. “If I’m shooting for one holiday season, I wouldn’t be working on it. This is a journey."

Once they arrive, the computers will embody Google’s strongest foray into consumer and business computing.

Prices of the laptops have not been determined, executives said when asked if the Web-centered notebook computers might cost less than traditional PCs which brim with storage and processing hardware.

Samsung Electronics and Acer will handle hardware for the first batch of Google laptops, and Intel will craft the processors.